If you are unfamiliar with the Earth's Children books by Jean Auel, the following is a short "backstory" to give 'Book 7: The Sacred Mountain' some context. It was written for fans of the EC genre, so there might be references to past events that have not taken place in this fan-fiction extension of the series. The Earth's Children Books tell the story of Ayla, an orphaned Cro-Magnon girl who is adopted and raised by a tribe of Neanderthals and who later embarks on a journey to find the Others (her own kind), meeting along the way her romantic interest and supporting co-protagonist, Jondalar. The storyline is reminiscent of Anne of Green Gables on steroids. The story begins as a small girl is playing in a stream with her family nearby, when suddenly the earth shakes violently making the child fall into the water. When she looks around after the shaking stops, she can't see any of her people (it is assumed they have been swallowed by the huge crack that appeared in the earth were her people had been.). The small child finds she is all alone and eventually wanders aimlessly to the point of near death. A group of Neanderthals seeking a new home after their cave collapsed due to the recent earthquake happen upon the unconscious child. The medicine woman in their group picks the child up, taking her with them to care for her. After the young Cro-Magnon girl recovers she tries to communicate with the medicine woman asking the strange looking female's name and providing hers. Apparently, it turns out the Neanderthals find it hard to pronounce her name so they call her Ayla which is the best they can verbally reproduce. You see, in Jean Auel's version of the lands of 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals speak very little, mostly using hand signs and only verbalize names and to call out warnings when it is necessary to get attention when no one is looking their way. Broud is the son of the group's leader Brun. He hates the child of the Other's and when she defies his hand signs to serve him it infuriates him and he tries to humiliate her, but she's having none of it, even as a small child she realizes that Broud is picking on her and she resists him. The other Clan members couldn't understand Broud's obsession with Ayla and why he was acting the way he was and had no social mechanism to handle his violence toward her. During this time not everything was bad. Ayla had bonded with Iza the medicine woman who began teaching her about herbs and medicines. Ayla took to it right away and over time became quite accomplished at healing as well as most tasks assigned to her. Ayla was eventually adopted by the Mog-ur (spiritual leader) of the clan and was loved by him as well as his sibling Iza. Broud wouldn't stop harassing Ayla and eventually began to sexually abuse her because he realized she hated it, but couldn't do anything about it. Finally she becomes pregnant, giving her the status of a mother, requiring some respect, even from Broud. Of course no one realized the baby was Broud's because they thought children had to do with totems mixing, not the sex act. Although Ayla began to wonder about cause and effect. The child was named Durc and Ayla after passing through a very difficult birthing, loved the child and began to ignore Broud, even when he gave her the sign, demanding sex, she would just submit as if she no longer cared. Soon Broud lost interest in her because he could no longer get a rise out of her, but rest assured, though he no longer taunted her, he was only biding his time. Some years later Brun, Broud's father stepped down as leader and it was Broud's hereditary right to take over the leadership. The first thing he did was to turn Ayla out to fend for herself. Unfortunately, prior to this Iza had died from an illness and the Mog-ur was killed in a cave-in. Ayla, worried she might die from exposure and Broud's death curses so she left her son Durc (who was 4 by then) with Clan women friends who would care for him and began the search for someplace to survive the coming winter and possibly find people of her own kind. Ayla found a valley and a cave of her own and over several years in total solitude discovered she could survive, becoming confident in her abilities. She discovered the value of taming a horse and the power of a fire stone, (flint and iron-pyrite). She set up house in her cave, making all the things she needed to live well. Hunting on horseback might be the main reason she survived all alone for so long. Also during this time Ayla found a baby cave lion and brought it up calling it Baby. Then one day while out on a gathering expedition down the valley, Ayla heard a human scream of pain in the distance and searched for the source. She found her cave lion's mate standing over a mauled man, a man of her kind. Another man was there too, but he was dead from the attack. Ayla brought the wounded man back to her cave and cleaned his wounds, sewing the gashed flesh of his leg and hip closed. She did this not because she knew it would work, but because she had been trained by the Neanderthal medicine woman Iza and had a hunch she might be able to save his life. When the man, Jondalar, woke up his first sight is of an attractive woman kneeling over him tending his wounds. Ayla was overcome at finding another of her kind and one thing lead to another and they soon became lovers. Of course Ayla has only known Neanderthal clan ways so there are misunderstandings, not to mention Jondalar's opinion of Neanderthals as being less than human. Jondalar was attracted to Ayla, but thinks she might not be good enough to bring home as a mate. That and his opinion of the only people Ayla has known and thought of as family would be cause for friction that follows the couple through the next book in the series. One good example of how people tended to underestimate Ayla is when in book 3: The Mammoth Hunters, Ayla is to be adopted into their tribe. As a general practice, a new inductee usually exchanged gifts with each hearth within the tribe, but their leader thought they should dispense with this because he knew that Ayla had lived on her own and had been brought up by Neanderthal savages. Ayla insisted that she and Jondalar go back to her cave in her valley to retrieve gifts for her new people. When she and Jondalar returned for the induction ceremony and Ayla gave each head of hearth their gifts, they were ready to pretend they liked her gifts not expecting much, but as it turned out her gifts where of high quality. She'd had spent years alone in her valley perfecting her abilities and had made high quality items that everyone was impressed with. This theme of being underestimated occurs again and again throughout the series as Ayla and Jondalar travel from one end of the land to the other during their Journey home to Jondalar's people. The secret to the success of this series is the fact that the main character exemplifies what is good in humankind and the author (there is irony here in the fact that Ayla was VERY mistreated in the beginning) never makes the Ayla character experience any real harm by others, where other writers might have gone to the dark-side just to accomplish some cheap plot twists. Jean never did that, she always kept to the theme of good vs evil, where good always won. NEW READERS - TIP: Skip book 6, you won't like it. All the rest of the books provide great storytelling, even with the sometimes overlong travelogues and repetitive quotes from the Mother's prayer.